I mentioned the allegations against Craig Bellamy of bullying and anti English bias made by a couple of players who are/were connected to Cardiff City’s Academy which have appeared in the Daily Mail recently in a piece I did on here about ten days ago.
At the time I said I wouldn’t be saying much on the subject until the results of the enquiry into the subject being carried out by the club are known. However, the same paper carried a follow up piece yesterday which, it seems to me, has the potential to take this affair quite a bit further if it has any truth in it.
That said, I’m going to stick to my original opinion that I shall only comment directly on this matter when the club have produced their take on it and my only reason for mentioning it here is to wonder whether it was only a coincidence that, at the time Craig Bellamy has voluntarilly stood down from his duties while the enquiry takes place, our Under 23 squad for the match with Ipswich at Cardiff City Stadium yesterday lunchtime included five regular members of the Academy Under 18 side?
Off the top of my head, this will have been the first time in close to two years that such players had featured for the Under 23s because, during that period, the only ones seen from that age group in the Development side squad would be those who tended to miss out on selection for what was, essentially, Bellamy’s team.
Whatever the reasoning behind the move, defender Joel Bagan and midfielders Sion Spence and Keenan Patten were in the starting line up yesterday while striker Dan Griffiths and another midfielder in Sam Bowen were brought on from the bench in the second half.
In truth, there’s not a great deal to be said about the match because it was low on goalmouth incident. Indeed, as the half time whistle blew I said to the couple of people I was with “well, that’s three halves of absolutely woeful football I’ve watched live in the past two days!”.
There were only two occasions when a goal looked possible in the opening forty five minutes. A good block by captain Ciaron Brown took the sting out a close range shot from Ipswich’s Ben Folami to the extent that the ball looped gently into the hands of Brian Murphy (one of two senior players in the City team along with Jazz Richards).
At the other end, City, somehow, failed to score when Ipswich keeper Harry Wright presented them with what looked like a certain goal by losing possession of the ball when he had it at his feet. Jack McKay decided to pass when it seemed easier to score, Laurence Wootton had his shot blocked, Spence and trialist Quivi Fowler (who scored a fine goal for us in the 1-1 draw at Crystal Palace last week, but did little of note here) all got involved amid half hearted claims that the latter had been fouled, but the visitor’s goal remained intact.
If the first half had been “absolutely woeful”, then I must say that the second period was a big improvement as the game became a more enjoyable watch. City had what was their best attacking spell of the match by some distance in the first ten minutes as Fowler glanced a decent headed opportunity well wide, Brown was foiled from close range by a fine defensive block, while Spence was another to suffer because of good Ipswich defending as his shot beat Wright, but some excellent covering ensured that the ball was cleared off the line.
Sadly, apart from a long range effort by James Waite which fizzed not too far wide, that was the end of the City as an attacking force as a bigger and stronger Ipswich side gradually took control against a team that did not suffer in comparison with them at all in terms of football ability.
For a side that were top of their league though, Ipswich struggled to create meaningful chances and, with the game well into the signalled four minutes of added time, their superiority in the last half an hour or so had only produced a close range header by Idris El Mizouni which, luckily for City, flew straight into Murphy’s arms. However, it was then that the visitors got the sort of luck which tends to follow you around when you are in the position in the table that Ipswich are as another sub, Armondo Dobra, was allowed too much room and time to get a shot away that Murphy looked to have covered until a deflection off a defender left him helpless.
While the visitors had probably just about shaded things over the ninety minutes, it was a heartbreaking way for City to lose and despite that slight Ipswich superiority, I reckon a draw would have been the fairest outcome.
It was a strange match from a City perspective because it seemed to me that there were a lot of good individual performances, but they didn’t translate into an effective team showing – particularly in an attacking sense. For me, Began was just about the best of the youngsters, but Spence and Patten both gave good displays, while of the more regular players at this level, Brown put in a strong showing, yet, as I hinted earlier, it was hard to say that anyone had a poor game.
While the match was taking place, Nantes striker Emiliano Sala was flying into Cardiff for talks about a proposed move to City for a fee of in the region of 20 million pounds. The Agentinian returned home a few hours later after what were reported as constructive talks and so a deal which had been specualted on for some time, but seemed to be going nowhere because of the player’s reluctance to uproot to Wales, may yet come to fruition.
I’ve not commented much on here about the transfer window so far, prefering to do so when there was something besides gossip to report on, but there’s obviously somethimg more tangible to this story. Therefore, I’m grateful to the messageboard contributor who posted what is, by far, the most comprehensive assessment of the player I’ve seen – Sala is at number eighteen in this list.
I knew very little about Sala so was not prepared to say much about what sort of signing he would be for us, but what did strike me was that, rather like Bobby Decordova-Reid, we looked to be pursuing an attacking player based on just one purple goalscoring patch during what was a pretty long career. However, the revelation that Sala had scored twelve goals for Nantes in his last two Ligue 1 seasons for them tends to make me think I was wrong in my view – twelve goals a season is hardly prolific, but it is not bad at all when you consider the standard of the league he has done it in.
On the other hand, the description of Sala as something of a figure of fun earlier in his career tends to confirm that he would appear to be what I would call a typical Warnock type player whereby skill appears to be some way down a list in which things like size, power and doggedness seem to have a higher rating. Also, especially with Saturday’s match still fresh in the memory, that bit about him having “a better supporting cast of providers than he has done in the past” at Nantes strikes an ominous note – I hope for the club’s sake that Sala does not get to see a video of Cardiff v Huddersfield before he signs!
Although I would be surprised to see it happen if Sala does sign for us, it’s also being reported that we have bid something like 13 million pounds for Tanzanian striker Mbwana Samatta who plays for Genk and is the leading scorer in the Belgian top flight. Apparently, Samatta was on the brink of signing for Schalke in the Bundesliga before we made our bid, so there may be more to this one than just tittle tattle as well.
